Chael Sonnen has opened the flood gates and don’t expect the flow of vitriol to slow until he gets his wish of facing UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones inside the Octagon.
For a short while it looked as if the world of mixed martial arts would be without the caustic Sonnen. He had lost in convincing fashion to Anderson Silva at UFC 148 and his hopes of receiving another shot at Silva’s UFC middleweight crown were close to none. He had, after all, been stopped twice by the champion and with fighters such as Chris Weidman, Brian Stann, Michael Bisping and Tim Boetsch waiting for their shot at Silva, it was the back of the line for Sonnen.
However the back of the line is not a place Sonnen seems to like to be, so when he announced that he would continue his MMA career at the light heavyweight limit of 205 pounds he did so with all the subtly of a knee to the groin (via UFC Tonight):
I could go up to 205 and I could take Jon Jones’ belt away the same as I could take away his candy on Halloween. Like a little punk kid, I could snatch it away all I want, but there is something to be said in sportsmanship for earning your shot and on the 29th of December I’m going to go through Forrest (Griffin) to do it.
As every MMA fan knows by now, Sonnen almost got the title fight he desires against Jones a lot sooner than anyone expected when Dan Henderson pulled up lame and was forced from the main event at UFC 151. Alas, Jones versus Sonnen was not meant to be as Jones turned down the fight, resulting in the complete cancellation of UFC 151.
That decision, whether it was the right one or not, gave Sonnen the opening he needed. We don’t know if Jones and Sonnen will ever fight, but we do know that isn’t all that important at this time for Sonnen. What is important is that the champion had a chance to fight him and turned it down, a fact that Sonnen saw as a huge missed opportunity for Jones (via Bleacher Report):
This was his biggest opportunity. There’s no question I could beat Jon Jones. Jon Jones can beat me too. But I can beat him. If you ever wanted to stack the deck in his favor, you’d have done it on September 1. You’d have called me out of the blue, switched weight classes on me, put me on a plane to do a press tour, put me everywhere in the world except in the practice room. That was the opportunity he had. I could have beaten him, but he could have beaten me too.
After some misfires Jones eventually landed an opponent at UFC 152, Vitor Belfort. However if you ask Sonnen, that’s a temporary bump in the road and that he feels that he will be the one facing Jones at UFC 152, as he told ESPN Radio’s Max and Marcellus:
I’ve got an agreement to fight a gentleman named Forrest Griffin on December 29th but I don’t know. Jon Jones has a date on September 22nd and right now he’s fighting Vitor Belfort. Vitor never shows up, Vitor has pulled out of way more fights than he has ever shown up for so if I had to guess you’ll be seeing me fight Jon Jones on September 22nd
In the last year Belfort has withdrawn from two fight cards due to injury, UFC 139 against Cung Le and UFC 147 against Wanderlei Silva.
If Belfort does get injured during his camp and is forced from the main event at UFC 152 it will be interesting to see what occurs. Will the UFC call on Sonnen once again and if so, will Jones accept the fight this time? UFC President Dana White lambasted Jones over turning down the fight the first time, so one can only imagine what would happen if he did so a second time.
One thing is almost certain, whether he ends up on the UFC 152 fight card or not, Sonnen is going to be like a gnat buzzing around Jones’ ear until the two eventually meet inside the Octagon. The question is will Jones ignore that incessant buzzing or become obsessed with trying to swat it away?
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